Every enterprise wants a reliable, stable partner when it comes to buying technology. But they also want one that isn't standing still when it comes to innovating on current and brand-new technology.

And the key to making that second criteria is research and development, a focal point for IBM when you consider what some other competitors are doing with R&D funding.

A recent Wall Street Journal article clearly illustrates the point and is worthy of a read. As it details, IBM has consistently invested and built on R&D while others, notably HP, have done quite the opposite. :

In the article, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano explains why IBM has a strong R&D commitment and in a rare event takes HP to task for not doing the same.

In a quest to make bigger revenue, HP just simply cut R&D costs. In contrast IBM's budget remained strong at 6% of revenue, hitting about $6 billion each yea, which is double of what HP spends.

And IBM did it without hurting margins. And in developing its own proprietary innovations IBM has built new products for less than what would have likely cost in an acquisition approach.

So when it comes to making those big decisions about what vendor technology should power the all-important data center and database operations, it's pretty clear that the choice should be the one who keeps making better technology over one who doesn't and instead takes an acquisition approach which often delays new innovation as integrating products and third-party solutions into a portfolio takes lots of time.